One day LMCE will not fight alsa, it will bend it to its will, and audio will "just work" on everything.

One day lmce video of any kind will play cleanly on almost everything without fiddling with it.

That is the only future of AV I can see from behind all the code.

And if you have anything to do with it, this will be the case, I am confident.

Another thought/question I've come across in the search for AV-control info/understanding/enlightenment-

App-control is a term that seems to be bandied around a bit. As I understand it this is the ability to download an APP to control your HT Receiver. Presumably to do this the Receiver must either be networked (wired/wireless) or bluetooth enabled. If the former, would a receiver that advertises App-control be easy (relatively) to setup a device template for, based on the assumption that the control protocol must be available if there is an APP that uses it? Any thoughts?

I think what Thom says is probably the truth but I fear what I will find price-wise in that regard. I may be wrong but if it's a case of tripling or quadrupling my budget for a receiver then it may be out of my pricing zone as techstyle hints. Sadly, I guess, the guys that play in the custom install market know that their customers do not have a budget problem.

Regarding CEC - I guess what I was saying ito poor support is that firstly graphics cards with HDMI outputs don't support it which is annoying. Unless it's way more complex than I realise, that would be a big step forward and we wouldn't have to worry about injectors. Then, secondly, I understand that the manufacturers typically have their own set of protocols and codes Bravia Sync etc etc with limited overlap. I gather if you have an HDMI port on your device you're obliged to wire it for CEC but not implement it unless you want to.

How about an Arduino injector? Would that be an option? Don't know much about Pi and Duinos except that Duinos are a bit cheaper and more accessible in my neck of the woods.

Anyway, it will be fun to see my local AV "Experts" sweat when I ask them all these questions ;-)

Interestingly the Raspberry Pi does support full CEC control when using MythTV installed on it. We're finding that essentially all TV manufactured in the last 24 months in our experience have full CEC control.implemented. We support the Pulse-8 USB powered CEC control interface too so if you need CEC control with an nVidia based MM/MD then you can use a Pulse-8. See here; http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Dianemo_S#Using_HDMI-CEC_to_Control_Media_Devices

Any device that is HDMI 1.0 to HDMI 1.3a compliant will be also comply with the relevant CEC Rev. In our experience TV's that meet that spec in the last approx. 24 months do indeed comply with CEC (this based on the random selection of TV's we come into contact with).